Summary

Kara still guilty and broken over what happened with Lena and now broken over losing everything again, finds out about the Monitor's deal with Oliver and demands that it be her who should have to die instead.

Kara stares at the screen. Blue eyes filled with tears and a pain too familiar to ever be forgotten. Alex's hand is on her shoulder. Holding onto her as if somehow, she could also hold her together. But she is already broken. She steps back. Once. Twice. Feet catching and stumbling in their retreat as her eyes refuse to look away because then it will be real — because then for a second time, it will all be gone. Just when she had just gotten it all back. Just when she held Johnathan for the first time. And Rao, she thinks of Johnathan, and it makes her think of Kal, and she remembers the feeling of them both so small in her arms.

She feels Alex's hands on her shoulders, hears her voice quiet and steady.

"Kara"

Sees her sister's eyes holding back tears.

"They-they could have gotten away."

Knows she is trying to give her something to hold onto.

And you know she's right. Brainy's signal got to them, at least.

It could have been enough.

Maybe it was enough.

So she closes her eyes and leans forward, pressing her forehead against her sister's with a subtle nod as she accepts Alex's offer of hope — the one thing she has so often stood for, that she must now herself believe in.

But hope soon turns to chaos as the alarms around them sound.

Alex's arms tighten in reflex as Kara pulls away, but Kara just looks at her, tries to tell her it's okay, that she knows they have to go.

Alex, shakes her head, draws her gun, and grips Kara's hand one more time as hard as she can.

Kara stays there a second longer, wipes the tears from her eyes, and then runs her hands along the fabric of her cape until they tighten into fists at her side.

She gets to Alex's side just as a figure lands in front of them.

Kara sees her raise her gun, watches her step forward, hears her tell her to stand down, to get on the floor, hears the anger in her voice that sounds so much like pain that it could be her own.

But she steps in front of her. Hands almost numb to the strength they contain. She isn't going to lose anyone else she loves today, and she is going to fight for the ones she already has if she can.

"Did you do this, did you destroy Argo?"

Kara can feel the heat behind her eyes, the pounding of her heart. She relives all the years of guilt and pain and loss in every second that passes.

But then she sees them.

And for a second time, her steps falter, but this time they don't retreat, this time she feels like she is 13 again and she is seeing her family's crest on Kal's chest for the first time after all those years thinking that she would never see it again.

Lois reaches her first. And Kara's voice is breathless in disbelief against her shoulder.

"Rao, you're okay."

Lois tries to tell her what happened, but it's lost to the feeling of seeing them both here.

And then she's in Kal's arms too. And they may be as strong as her own, but also like her own; they are heavy with the weight of something else unspoken.

"We sent Johnathan off in an escape pod."

And she tries not imagine what that could mean, what could happen. She tells yourself that Johnathan is not her. But she can see in Kal's eyes that he is trying to tell himself the same thing.

It's then you think of her mother.

It's then she realize she isn't there.

She looks at Kal, and Kara sees another thing she recognizes. She see the pain of someone grieving. And so she knows the answer to the question she is about to ask even before she does. But still, she needs to ask it. She needs to know she's really gone this time.

"And my mother?"

She try to keep it steady, but her voice waivers on every word.

"I-I'm so sorry, Kara."

And she wants to think that there's more than just those words. That there's at least a reason that she left her behind again. But for now, they are all she gets. And everything about it seems unfair. Unfair that she is gone. Unfair that she doesn't know why. Unfair that she didn't get to say goodbye.

"Kara?"

Unfair that everyone is looking at her like is supposed to know what to do now.

Kara sees the others for the first time then too—Kate, Oliver, and someone next to him she doesn't recognize.

She thinks she sees guilt in Oliver's eyes.

"Where are we, and what just happened?"

Kara hesitates. She can't get the last image she has of her mother out of her head. She had told her she loved her. Told her that she would visit soon."

"Uh.."

Alex steps closer to her, ready to step in. But the other woman answers first.

"You're on Earth-38, there..."

And apparently earns a fist to her face for it, but Alex quickly pulls Kate away.

Kate's anger and Alex's quick movements pull her away from herself, and she tries to make sense of what's happening.

"I have no idea who the hell you are so I'd rather hear from someone else if that's okay?"

Alex lets go of Kate, pushing her back slightly.

"Yeah, well, we're all trying to figure some things out right now?"

And Kate seems to drop her head slightly at this, takes off her cowl, and reveals her own tired eyes as she glances at Kara.

She realizes then in Kate's anger, and Oliver's guilt, and Kal's pain, and her own grief, that whatever this is, it is more than any of them realize.

She steps forward, and Kara doesn't miss the look her sister gives her, the one that says you don't have to do this right now, you don't owe any of them anything right now. And she doesn't. But she just watcher her mother die. Just lost her home again. And none of them know what that feels like — to lose everything like that — but she does. And she's going to do whatever she can to make sure they never do.

"You're on Earth-38, and you might not know them, but you know me, and if we were all brought here together, then it was for a reason."

Alex and Kal look at her, taken back by the shift in the steadiness of her voice, and while there is pride in Kal's eyes, there is worry in Alex's because, after all this time, she's seen Kara do too many reckless things in the name of hope not to be.

A/N: I am still working on the "Nature of Dust I promise". The goal will be to finish that during the hiatus in December I think. That's more of an AU than this, as in that none of what happened with Lena after Episode 1 of season 5 happened.

Anyway... as always thanks to you all for reading. Comments are always welcome and appreciated and I am open to things you guys would like to see me write. Yell at me in the box below or on Tumblr vox-ex.